Originally Posted by
mattm
Olympic View RR Cat 4 - 54 miles. Only ended up 14th place but it was an awesome race!
18 mile loop, rolling hills, awesome northwest country roads (read: chipseal), a hairpin turn at the bottom of a hill. Cool. A little wet at the start but it got sunny eventually.
I was there too. Decided to race in the Cat5 pack (I'm still there, although I may have more starts than any cat 5 in history) and help out a couple of team mates racing in their first race.
Pretty non-eventful race although I attempted (way to late) to bridge to a 2 man break and ended up spending almost a full lap in no-man's land. Finally decided to give up the ghost, get some rest in the pack and duke it out in the field sprint.
I told my team mates that I thought the descent of the "Cemetary Hill" would be a cluster if we didn't stretch it out, so I wanted to attack right before the climb up to the cemetary. That worked well. I crested first then descended as 2nd wheel, coming around that S curve onto the bridge.
The sprint featured an absolutely horrific crash that happened right next to me on the left. I could feel the little shock wave of the impact.
But I got through OK, as did all my team mates. There were some very serious injuries to those involved though. One guy who got dropped from the pack and limped in about 5 minutes back said that there was a rider who had gone through the barbed wire fence on the side of the road, and another was bleeding out of their mouth and nostrils, with about 6-7 total riders involved.
Stats for the year: 8 races, 8 crashes in my fields. Last year: 22 races, 0 crashes. What's going on?
